Using my voice to defend those we cannot yet hear.

The “IT” Factor.

There is an astonishing amount of dehumanizing the unborn in today’s society.
People constantly argue over viability, rights, and personhood.
Prochoice activists want nothing more than to see children in the womb viewed as non living, even non human.
Prolife activists spend countless hours trying to change the way people see the unborn, we want nothing more than to see children in the womb viewed as living human beings.
But much like prochoicers, us prolifers are doing something that makes acknowledging preborn babies as real people even more difficult. And we’re doing it every single day.
I call this problem the “IT” factor.

I’ve noticed how people everywhere in every religion and political party, even the most active prolifers in our communities, are completely unaware that they are calling unique living human beings “ITS” daily!
The problem became even more apparent when I became pregnant with my baby girl. And yes, it is a problem.
People constantly ask “when is IT due?” or “what is IT?”. They constantly announce “ITS a boy!” Or “ITS a girl!”. I’ve even heard moms say “ITS kicking me” or “I just want IT to be born already!”.

Since when did it become acceptable especially in prolife circles to refer to a person as an IT? I found it deeply disturbing to see how many people claim to see the unborn as individual people but yet they refer to them as nothing more than an IT.
There are countless t-shirts, billboards, protest signs, and bumper stickers that in an attempt to be prolife actually completely undermine the preborn babies humanity.
“ITS a child. Not a choice.” That’s what the prolife community says on a daily basis but I want to challenge everyone to change that thinking and realize a BABY is not an IT, and that is why a BABY is not a choice!

Let’s stop asking when is IT due and start asking when he/she is due. If we don’t know gender we can just as easily ask when is your baby due. Let’s stop announcing our child’s gender by saying ITS a girl, let’s start saying SHE is a girl. Let’s actually give these tiny people the respect we would give any other person. You’d never call a toddler or an senior citizen an IT, why is it okay to call an unborn baby that? It’s not.
Prochoicers call unborn babies clumps of cells and parasites. They claim there is no real person in the womb. How can we as prolifers debate that if we ourselves don’t treat unborn babies as people rather than objects to be thrown out at our will? We can’t. We have to do better at respecting the unborn.

I refuse to call a human being an IT and I correct others when they do it because my job is to defend these children and their humanity and that starts with how people view them. Before we knew the gender of our baby we came up with the gender neutral nickname, Poppy, because our baby was the size of a poppyseed when we found out I was pregnant. I can truthfully and happily say I have never, not once, referred to my baby as an IT.

I want to challenge you all to really try and change this habit we’ve all been guilty of at one point. If you don’t think it’s true just spend some time and really listen to how people are talking and I think you’ll hear what I’m talking about. Such a small word can really do so much damage in the fight for life.
I pray one day it will be unfathomable to refer to a precious child as an IT.
Let’s all work together to bring the IT factor to an end.

One thought on “The “IT” Factor.”

I totally agree and have noticed the same. I don’t know a good way to make the point to other people without seeming combative, but getting our own speech right is a good start. I put this in the same category as tendencies to encode our language with the idea that a baby only exists/is alive once we meet him, or she’s born. Phrases to celebrate a birth like ‘now you’re a father!’, ‘we have a neice!’, and ‘we’re a family now!’ all reek of denying the baby’s existence before birth canal passage. They should be exclaimed during pregnancy, not as news after birth, right? Most people don’t notice what their celebration implies, but that just makes it sadder to me – that well meaning people are reinforcing a culture that denies humanity to the most vulnerable, and they’re not even aware…